


To Find Serenity

by sleepyspoonie



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 01:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20733722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepyspoonie/pseuds/sleepyspoonie
Summary: It hurts, the first time Keyleth wakes and doesn’t think of him. She had promised forever, but he’s gone, so shouldn’t it hurt forever?When she remembers herself, she feels guilty.AKA: Keyleth learns how to mourn, then how to move on. A lot of messy feelings exist in between the two.





	To Find Serenity

It hurts, at first, when she wakes and doesn’t think of him.

The slow ascension from sleep to consciousness comes peacefully, without the ache of emptiness by her side in the too-big bed. The sun hangs in the sky, birds twitter, and summer sets a heavy warmth in the air. Keyleth feels at peace.

The absence of Vax returns to her. She feels a stab of grief, then of guilt.

She had opened her eyes and not missed him.

It feels like a betrayal, somehow. He’d been devoted to her, hadn’t he? And she to him—she’d sworn she would love him for the rest of her life, and he had sworn the same. But he’s gone, and now it’s just her. Just Keyleth.

Just waking up alone in an empty room day after day, missing the warmth of her lover beside her. Just watching her family get married and move on into their own happily ever afters. Just trudging through every day, trying not to think about how long the future is, how long forever is; trying not to think about how empty those things feel.

It hurts. Until it doesn’t.

And that hurts too. It invites a new depth to her grief, pressing uncomfortably into all of the empty spaces where she had loved him. How much can she really believe in the eternality of her feelings if she doesn’t feel his absence in her every waking moment? She had promised forever, but he’s gone, so shouldn’t it hurt forever?

She resents him, sometimes, for permeating her life as completely as he did. In every leg of her journey he matched her step, from the very first stumbling ones she took away from the Ashari to the confident stride of the Voice of the Tempest after she had taken her rightful place amongst them. Through all of that, he was always beside her. There’s nowhere she can turn and not see him.

When she remembers herself, she feels guilty.

She doesn’t know if it’s fair, to want something in her life that he hasn’t touched. Something pure still, something unstained by black feathers of grief. After all, she has years to look forward to—decades, centuries, millennia. But his life is over, cut short by his own damnable sense of duty and the unknowable machinations of the Raven Queen.

The guilt is nearly as constant as the grief.

Keyleth doesn’t know how she’s supposed to move on, how she’s supposed to heal when the love that passed through fire with her has been extinguished. But she also doesn’t know how she’ll do anything but—the months march on into years, and the years too will stretch before her into centuries. Could she survive this grief, if she carried it to the end?

The rest of her life is such a long time. She couldn’t truly conceptualize it then, how long millennia are. She was barely more than a child, just as the rest of them, thrown into a destiny they could never have anticipated. She doesn’t think about if he would have done it again, had he known. She knows what the answer is.

He made a choice, and the choice was to protect everyone, just as he always had. The truth angers her on as many a sleepless night as those it brings her solace. Vax had never flinched when those he loved were in need. And… he had loved her.

Over time, her anger quiets. His truth brings serenity.

In the future, Keyleth is happy again. She smiles again, and laughs again, and one day, not as far into the future as she thinks, she loves again. The ache eases. So does the guilt.

She’s happy.

He would want her to be happy.


End file.
